Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Publishers Lunch

News Corp. reported
fiscal second quarter results through December 31, with revenues at
HarperCollins nudging up by $3 million to 469 million -- with all of the gain
and then some coming from foreign exchange, which added $8 million in the
quarter. EBITDA of $80 million was up $5 million from a year ago, with foreign
exchange adding $1 million.

Along with the currency boost, the company cited "higher backlist sales at
the children's books" as a contributing factor, calling out Ree Drummond's
The Pioneer Woman Cooks
and David Walliams' Bad
Dad as their top frontlist titles. The performance is in line with
a typical holiday quarter since the acquisition of Harlequin, comparable to
last year as well as the same period three years ago (when they had sales of
$469 million and EBITDA of $77 million).

Digital sales increased 2 percent over the previous year, "driven by the
growth in downloadable audiobook sales," and comprised 16 percent of
consumer revenues for the quarter.

Sales at parent company News Corp. were $2.18 billion, up from $2.12 billion a
year ago. Net loss for the quarter was ($66) million, as compared to ($219)
million in the prior year, but the improvement was offset by a charge of $174
million related to the new tax bill.

Memorials
There will be a memorial service for Toby
Eady on Monday, April 9 at 4 pm the Royal Over-Seas League in St.
James's, London. Visitors are asked to confirm their attendance by emailing dha@davidhigham.co.uk.

Similarly, Barnes & Noble asks that people wishing to attend the
celebration of Bob
Wietrak's life please RSVP to kndavis55@gmail.com so that they can
accommodate seating.

Interviews
Macmillan ceo John
Sargenttells
the Bookseller that when Holt publisher Steve Rubin originally signed a
book contract with Michael Wolff, it was for a book about Fox News, not Donald
Trump. On the issue of whether the publisher erred in not anticipating how
explosive demand for FIRE AND FURY would be, Sargent says, "We always
thought there was the potential for it to be big: we had orders for 60,000
copies, and had decided on a very aggressive print run, 150,000 books." He
does say that in retrospect, "We would have found ways to lock down the
PDF more tightly, and done more to prevent piracy. It's not something we're
used to, WikiLeaks forcing out a book!" (It was, however, the PDF of the
UK edition from Little Brown UK that was posted online, not Macmillan's file.)

Sargent does have a caution,
directed at those who work in publishing: "Publishers should be careful:
we should publish across the spectrum for everybody, not just from the point of
view of our industry’s employee base. What’s important is the conversation: The
right answer is not to silence, but to encourage conversation in a well-meaning
way, especially for younger people. At a time when the US is so ideologically
split, we should be publishing books for the country as a whole."

Asked about Amazon,
he remarks: "I have huge respect for the company and those who work there:
they’re extremely creative, hard-working, ambitious [people]. Amazon has done a
lot for the business, and the problems it poses are due to its success. These
are the same problems we've always had, with one player being very powerful.
Our job with Amazon is to sell a lot of books, and at the same time, make sure
that the whole ecosystem of publishing remains stable and functions at the
highest level. We have to resolve conflicts as best we can."